


Mapped in Scars

by dreamsofdramione



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Magical Tattoos, Scars, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:09:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23269723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsofdramione/pseuds/dreamsofdramione
Summary: Hermione learns about Charlie and his history through the map of marks on his body.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Charlie Weasley
Comments: 24
Kudos: 219
Collections: Weasleys Writing War - Flash Comp Edt 2





	Mapped in Scars

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [WeasleysWitchesWriters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeasleysWitchesWriters/pseuds/WeasleysWitchesWriters) in the [WeasleysWritingWar_FlashCompEdt2](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/WeasleysWritingWar_FlashCompEdt2) collection. 



> This fic was written for Weasleys, Witches, & Writers Facebook group’s Flash Comp. My chosen main character is Charlie Weasley, and the prompt for this Edition was Careers.
> 
> Winner: Overall Favorite
> 
> I do not own anything in the Harry Potter universe. I want to thank my Alpha/Beta, PacificRimbaud, for her work on this story.

Hermione knows Charlie’s arm must hurt, stretching the day old burn as he reaches for the fledgling Opaleye she’d brought in just two days before. It’s the same one that caused the little splotch of red that colours between the lines of a word in what she thinks must be French. 

Charlie’s covered in tattoos, magical and muggle alike. On his arms she sees various runes and she notices he’s got a few creatures roaming around, too. Luckily, he hasn’t caught her watching them yet, but when they start to move, she can’t seem to make herself look away. Magical tattoos are something Hermione, herself, finds fascinating. She doesn’t think she’ll ever tire of watching the ink come to life. When he inches his hand into the cave, she watches a dragon crawl down the crook of his arm. Hermione has to remind herself she’s here on a mission to deliver the dragon and go back home. Nothing less but also nothing more.

She notices Charlie’s freckles are more pronounced even though he isn’t as pale as his brother. Painted and primed from working in the sun for so long, he’s bronzed. Even his hair is a shade off from the red locks she knows so well. It’s a little darker and a lot more unkempt. Everything about him is alluring. If allure had a face, it would be Charlie Weasley, covered in tattoos and scars, sporting the same lopsided grin he shoots her when the little dragon nudges his fingers instead of burning him this time. 

“I think she likes me.” His teeth are too straight and his smile is too wide and Hermione thinks the little fledgling would be a fool _not_ to like someone like him.

She knows she’s staring, but she’s also smiling, so she hopes he thinks nothing of it. Well, maybe. A part of her might hope he _does_ think something of it, but her rational side quickly tampers down the errant thought.

Hermione lets her smile curve all the way across her lips as she laughs. “I’m sure she does.”

* * *

There’s something to be said for scars, Hermione thinks. Something to be said for marks and lines and raised bits of flesh. She wonders if they’d feel like a map beneath the tips of her fingers, a smattering of speckles that navigate a life really lived. He’s telling her about the puckered flesh on the swell of his hip and she’s definitely not thinking about asking to see it. 

Before she can stop herself, delicate fingers dust the dark lines decorating the fresh burn and he holds his breath as she asks, “What does this mean?” They’re definitely too close and she can smell the firewhisky in the air as he lets out a loud breath. She wonders if he tastes like it, too.

“Fire.” The way he’s staring at her with those big blue eyes that somehow look absolutely nothing like his brother’s causes her breath to hitch. For as often as Hermione has found herself comparing the two over the last few days, she can see now how very different they are. When he looks down again, her gaze follows as he leads her finger lightly around the curve of the lilting script. “It’s in French.”

“French?” she asks. A smirk curls the edge of her lips as she quirks a brow. 

When he just nods she thinks of her own tattoo, the one she got just days after the end of the war. Hermione’s already pulling the jumper away from her collar as she turns her back to show him. “I have a phoenix on my shoulder.”

His breath catches and she can hear the rapture in his words when he calls it, “Beautiful.” She thinks so, too. It has to be, after all, to memorialize all that happened in those years. Granted, they’d won, but the price they’d all paid felt like quite a loss. 

He says something about playing with fire and she thinks it’s a little too on the nose as he traces the top of a wing. It feels like the Phoenix’s flames come to life when his fingers feather across the edges of the ink. Fire, indeed, she thinks and Hermione wonders what it’s like to be burnt. 

* * *

They’re on the lumpy couch again. The glasses filled with firewhisky don’t match but their grins do when he tells her about his first encounter at the sanctuary— and with a Hebridean Black, no less.

“Everyone laughed at me when I walked right up to it on my first day and stuck out my hand.” Hermione’s laughing, too, because surely even a rookie Dragonologist knows they’re incredibly aggressive. “In my defense, I’m basically the dragon whisperer. I had yet to meet one I couldn’t tame.”

She thinks it makes sense. Charlie Weasley is, after all, a legend in more than just his own mind. “But on your first day? Really?” It’s only laughable now because the scar he shows her is healed. 

“Let’t just say I learned my lesson early on. You know us Weasleys, forged through fire.” His hair is red and his freckles are rust and his eyes are practically sparking flames when he smiles. 

Hermione clears her throat and looks away from the mark he’s been pointing to just above his knee. He’s wearing those distracting shorts that are too loose around his chiseled hips. They’re not short by any means but they reveal tanned, toned thighs she definitely cannot look at for too long. 

He is her best friend’s brother. Her ex’s brother, too, and it’s all too complicated to even entertain so Hermione pulls up the sleeve covering a less obvious mark from the war and tells him about the time the fiendfyre nipped her as they raced out of the Room of Requirement. 

“Hermione Granger beat Fiendfire _and_ rode a dragon, huh? Sounds like you’ve lived quite the dangerous life,” Charlie says. His eyes are still bright and lips are still curved into a smirk and Hermione has to remind herself again that kissing the smile right off his face is _not_ an option.

“You’re one to talk.” She laughs and takes another sip. “Living amongst dragons isn’t exactly the safe path in life.” Hoping her smile edges on coy rather than obvious, she leans just a little closer, ignoring her better judgment. 

“I guess you could say I’ve never shied away from danger.”

Hermione could say the same thing, but she’s too distracted by the way Charlie licks his full lips and she has to feign a yawn as she bids him goodnight.

* * *

Wearing nothing but a loose pair of pajama bottoms and her matching lacy knickers and bra, Hermione tries not to shiver when Charlie’s fingers dance along the ladder of her ribs. “Who did this?” Though it’s quiet, there’s an edge to his voice that feels dangerous with a few drinks already in her system. 

“Dolohov,” she breathes. “He was… He was taken care of.” 

It’s a scar few have seen and the way Charlie’s thick fingers strum along the puckered flesh makes her wonder if she’d been too bold to pull off her shirt and show him. But then his own shirt joins her and he catches her fingers to place them along a series of deep gouges on his chest. 

She doesn’t ask where they’re from and she’s not entirely sure it matters when he whispers, “We all have our own marks to bear.”

He does, in fact, taste like firewhisky, and his hands feel like flames as they spread across the expanse of her bare back. For all the times she’s told herself she shouldn’t do this, she shouldn’t _want_ this, logic and rationale fall far too short to stop her hands from carding through wild tufts of his hair. His cabin isn’t very big and before she even knows they’ve left the room, her back is pressed against his plain sheets and he’s pulling gasps from deep in her lungs. 

Hermione may be young, just a few years out of school, but she’s far from inexperienced, so when Charlie’s hands glide along the path of her curves, she catches his wrist and pulls him down beside her. Her knees frame his hips, and her hands splay across the bold marks decorating his chest as they both claw their way to the edge of bliss. And when she crests that cliff, her release burns all the way to the tips of her toes.

Later, when they’re still twined together and panting to breathe, she kisses every blemish on his skin she can find and she thinks maybe the marks of their lives aren’t maps, per se, but rather momentos collected along the way.


End file.
